Sleeping Beauty in the City
by knotweed
Summary: AU. It's 2009, and Tsuna has been sleeping for a thousand years. He's in for a rude awakening. 27K, 8027, D18, etc.


**1 / 5.  
**

-

As a general rule, Ryohei had acceptable grades that society did not frown much upon. He was a good kid, but the only thing was that he couldn't made heads or tails of that Math thing. And sure he bombed the final exam for Art, but he wasn't really in touch with his creative side.

He did have a trick for everything else, though. As long as he related the subject to boxing, he was fine. Take Literature, for example. "Hey, this book is sempai's favorite book to the extreme!" Or Biology. "This 'lactic acid' is what makes my body extremely tired!" History, too. "This guy liked to box in his extreme amount of spare time!"

Because Ryohei was a kid who thought with his fists and not his head—which doesn't exactly make much sense because you're not supposed to take it literally, but some people like to make the connection to "Oh, he thinks a lot when he's working out!" to "Why can't this kid pay attention in class like the rest of them?"—so that is where it brings us to on that fine spring day when the fiasco all happened to unfold.

"Hey Sasagawa!" said an unnamed student that was sitting dejectedly on the mats.

"Shush!" Ryohei yelled with vigor as he struck the punching bag with an extremely hard punch. "I gotta think to the extreme for a bit!"

So that was that.

What was also unmentioned previously was that it seemed that every sentence he spoke ended in an exclamation mark. Even when he whispered! There appeared no way to ever quiet the boy down, but Kyoko has gotten used to it. Kyoko could get used to anything, but that's not the point.

"He so buff," said the exchange student sitting next to the unnamed student, watching Sasagawa spar with the oversized red sausage in poorly hidden awe. "He _bad_." The unnamed student said nothing, only raised on eyebrow, and began to sneakily scoot away from the exchange student. There were really some freaky people out there, and this exchange student could be one of them. The unnamed student made a mental note to file a complaint to the Disciplinary Committee.

"Hey Sasagawa!" the student shouted again. This time Ryohei remained silent and gave a grin as if to say, 'Hey, go ahead, I won't mind.' "Aren't you gonna miss junior high?" He took a quick swig of his water bottle. "I mean, sure it's got its downfalls and stuff, but I'm really gonna ache next year."

"'Cause you won't know anyone?" Sasagawa asked. After the last blow, he gave a breath of air, swooped down to pick up his own canteen, and sat down with the kid. "It's extremely alright! We got our extreme doubt now, but everyone's gonna turn out extremely okay at the end!"

"Even the funky, socially-retarded kids?" asked the hopeful student.

Sasagawa took one big gulp of water and then burst out, "No, of course not!" With four words, the kid's hopes had just been smashed into pieces. "You have to branch out! You can't be just a measly bean sprout with no hopes and dreams and ambitions for the future! You gotta grow! You need to be a _tree!_"

"I—I'll try," mumbled the kid dejectedly, playing with his water bottle.

"I can't hear you! You're extremely quiet!"

You'd wonder if Ryohei was deaf in one ear or something, or maybe partially deaf in both of them. In fact, that was what the kid was wondering also, but that was just Sasagawa's special way of saying, "Ayo man, I love you, you're my brudda from anotha mutha, ain't nuthin' gonna hold us back, yo, we're real tight, frikky fresh, fo' sho'!"

"Uh," said the kid, "sir, yes sir!"

Ryohei threw his head back and laughed heartily. "Hahaha, you're extremely funny!" Then, without warning, he sat up and said, very seriously and darkly, "Don't make fun of the military." It was the one of the very few sentences without an exclamation point the unnamed student had ever heard Sasagawa say in the three years he had known him. It was also the most solemn tone he had witnessed his saying, too.

"It won't happen again," promised the student quickly. It was like Ryohei was Dr. Hyde and Mr. Jekyll. Or maybe it was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—truthfully, they both didn't know, so the real title didn't exactly matter. All that did was that that Jekyll guy was a creep and needed therapy.

"Besides, what's there to worry about?" continued Ryohei quiet enthusiastically, clutching his water bottle. "Hibari's gonna be there with us too!"

The student choked on his spit, and Sasagawa shot him a concerned look. "Isn't that a bad thing, though?" Ryohei just laughed. "And how do you know he's in third year anyway? I heard that sometimes, when he actually goes to class, he sits one year with the first years for one class, then another first year class, then a third year class, then a second year one! Sasagawa, you don't know how weird that is!" The kid started to use hand gestures to allude to Hibari's weirdness. "He has those iron pole things! Like the things cheerleaders use, but only scarier and less twirly. What are those called?" He shook his head wildly. "Anyways, he has those sticks! And then he beats you up if you don't listen to him! How is that a good thing?"

Sasagawa laughed again like it was the funniest thing in the world, breaking the kid's heart again. "Nah, don't worry about it!" he exclaimed. "I believe that underneath all that bad boy image, Hibari is an extremely diligent and responsible person at heart! He'll beat up the extremely rude seniors next year."

"But then the seniors will beat _us_ up," said the unnamed student. As he gave it some more thought, he started to brighten up immediately. "Or _maybe_," he began, "Hibari's gonna beat all the snotty members of the student council up! And then he's gonna take over! And then it'll be exactly like junior high! Oh, Sasagawa, I like that plan."

"As do I!" shouted Ryohei. "Although I sometimes worry about my little sister to the extreme," he admitted.

They sat in empathetic silence for a while until the kid brought up this interesting subject:

"Hey, Sasagawa," he said tentatively, "have you heard about our new guidance counselor that's gonna come in this week? I heard he's young. And foreign. Do you think he'll be able to speak Japanese well?" He sighed wistfully. "I just hope he doesn't suck like the last one did. He was so friggin' scary."

"Do not underestimate people from unfamiliar places!" shouted Ryohei passionately, taking a huge gulp of water and shaking his fist. "Foreigners are very extreme."

And somewhere in the not-so distant distance, Dino sneezed.

-

But the thought of two kids in the boxing team gossiping about him never even crossed his mind. He sat upright in the enormous bed that he had pilfered from his father's estate in Italy (alright, so "pilfer" wasn't the word) with boxes and boxes of tissues pilled up on the nightstand. There were four covers curled around him and the electric blanket was turned to its highest.

"You know, Boss, if you're _really_ feeling sick, you should take next week off, too," advised Romario with the utmost gentleness from the other side of the line.

"Don't call me 'Boss' when I'm not even gonna be your boss anymore," Dino snapped wearily in Japanese into the phone, trying his best not to let a stuffy nose and a pounding headache deter him in any way. He was a stubborn person; once he got his head into something, he just never pulled away from it no matter how hard you tried. "Also, I'm really, really dying to meet the students." The pun was probably not intended. Dino really had no intention to die.

"Whatever you say, Boss," said Romario. "Just take care of yourself, please. And also, try not to use too many minutes. Your father still pays for your phone bill, you know."

"Then tell him not to, I'm fine by myself." This was a bit of a lie; he had also tried his best to get rid of the tripping thing, but he had tripped over the tissue boxes this morning. But that was because he was in the middle of a sneeze. See? He was fine. He was still a human being.

"I wouldn't want you to choke on your food and die or anything," said Romario.

"I might have to slap you on the face with a dead fish," replied Dino dryly. He checked the digital clock next to him. "Well, it was nice to speak to you again," he said, almost unsure of himself, both men on the line ignoring the fact that Romario called Dino every other night to make sure he was still conscious and breathing or there would be many things to explain to his father that he did not want to explain, "but really, I gotta run, it's getting really late." He sniffed, choked, and then started a coughing fit again.

The "late" part was also a stretch, but it was true, he _was_ tired. Why not retire early for the night instead of paying for it later in the morning? Besides, he was quite sick of the idle bi-daily chats and wanted nothing more than to finally relax. Relax like it was his own skin.

Romario hesitated in the mansion in Italy, a pregnant pause before saying, "Well, I guess you're right. You need your rest, Boss. You also might want to polish up on your Japanese before tackling on your new mission—"

"Yeah, yeah," interrupted Dino. "Goodnight! Actually, I think it's 'good afternoon' to you, but, really, it's all the same to me." He said this last bit condescendingly as if he were some famous actor in a movie dealing with lovesick women. When was the last time he dealt with a lovesick woman? He couldn't really remember. Truthfully, he kind of missed that feeling.

"Goodnight," said Romario tiredly, and then they both ended their call.

With a sigh, Dino examined the expensive screen for any scratches. This was bought with his father's money—twenty-four already and still being babied over by his family. He caught a glimpse of his own face and the spot of light that was from his lamp. His reflection, a young man with blonde hair and a nose red from sneezing so much, frowned back at him.

"Who are you kidding?" he asked himself darkly, and then tossed the cell phone gently onto the pile of clothes he had on his chair. The room was clean enough, in Dino's opinion; it just needed an outlier to make it more lived-in.

He crossed his arms and scowled and leaned back onto the propped-up pillows pressing against the wall. It made him feel more in authority, like his outlook on things really mattered. Next week, he might change lives. Tomorrow could only get better. That's what his mother used to say all the time when he had a tantrum, and he had actually believed her until she died. But Dino is okay with that; he never really liked her anyway. She was always absent in his life.

On the other hand, his father was an energetic fellow, only down when the market was doing badly and that's when his rare fits of depression kicked in, but otherwise he was fine. Now that Dino thought about it, his father wasn't exactly the best daddy in the world but he was okay, and Dino had turned out fine, not like the rich, stuck-up son of a bitch everyone expected him to be.

He did well in academics, of course, and when he first studied economics, he promptly fell in love with the subject. It was the study of scarcity, and who doesn't love a good scare like scarcity! Like water and oil and food and money, and it's frightening sometimes. And also wants and needs and demand and supply, and all day long these terms swirled round and round in his head. He was okay in mathematics although he had no potential for proofs and geometry because why would you need to sit down one day and measure the angles of things and figure out if this angle is congruent to the other unless you were a carpenter or some other sort of hands-on worker? But he was good at algebra, which he had never really used except finding out the taxes on things, except that's not really algebra. It was more like simple arithmetic.

And then he branched out. "Like a tree!" as Sasagawa Ryohei would put it, but at that point in time, Dino didn't know Sasagawa Ryohei and, therefore, he wouldn't be thinking about someone he had never met before. He studied psychology and then sociology and then urban studies and then education. Suddenly, it all made sense. He was troubled by all the troubled teens in the world (not that he wasn't a troubled teen just a few years ago—he refrained from using the word "decade" because that just lowered his self-esteem) and decided if there would at least _one _person to listen to their troubles and possibly even help them on the road of life, then it would be him.

Besides, he was kind of scared of running a big company like the family one. Dino had gotten so detached from his family that he wasn't even sure what they did anymore. And whenever someone asked him what his father was, he'd just reply in a very vague tone, "Well, he's just some guy" and avoid directly answering questions, which he had gotten to be quite good at. In fact, he was so good at it that everyone stopped asking him questions after the second one. Besides, if he had studied economics instead, surely he'd be the Boss one day.

And that was exactly the opposite of what he was trying to achieve. Dino was really quite sure that the company would be fine if someone like a distant cousin took over it. You didn't have to be family. All you had to be was good at what you did. They even say that blood is thicker than water, but when you mix blood and water up, they both look the same to him.

He wondered at first for a little while if the small language barrier would be the one holding him down. As he idly pondered this over a cup of coffee and a novel, he came to the conclusion that every teenage was ideally the same. They needed comfort and security and privacy and you couldn't nag them too much or they'll throw things and cry. (This came from first-hand experience.)

Dino at present time switched off his lamp, smoothed down his pillows, gathered up his blankets and tossed around for a while until he fell asleep.

He dreamt first of a squirrel being chased by angry bananas, and then after that dream faded into nothing, he dreamt of a fairytale. It was a strange phenomenon, to dream of sleeping while he himself was sleeping, but it was Sleeping Beauty, only the princess was a prince and his fairy godfather was a bit of an ass and purposely made his fairy godson hell.

"You're gonna sleep for a thousand years," declared the tiny, baby-sized fairy flatly, almost bored.

"What?" exclaimed Sleeping Boy incredulously, brown doe eyes widening in shock. He spluttered for a bit, so unlike the prince that he was supposed to be. "B-but—wait, you can't do that! How will I ever be awakened? I'll sleep for _eternity!_" he wailed.

"Are you stupid?" snapped the fairy. "I told you that you'll wake up in a thousand years. When a thousand years go by, you'll be awake and up on your feet like not a day has passed. Now go to sleep," he said, holding up his chameleon-shaped magical wand, preparing to cast a spell upon the prince because only God knows why.

"Ieee!" shrieked the fidgety prince.

Then he fell like the dead.

When Dino woke up cold and sweating, he was vaguely annoyed at his ridiculous dream, and also a bit anxious as well. He felt as if some part of the dream might have been important but he forgot it and cursed at himself.

Breathing in deeply, he ignored the coughing fit forming at his throat and glared at his clock. _4:44am_, it said in reply quite cheerfully in electric blue. Ridiculous.

He had read this in a book somewhere, when every bit of machinery always told the user, "I'm so happy to open this door for you!" Dino had always suspected that there would be a robot invasion some time soon, and this was why every time he remembered to do so, he would utter a quick "Thank you" to whatever he was using, just in case that they did decide to come alive and eat everybody. At least _he_ was saved.

He stayed awake for awhile, but figured that some boy who was dressed up as Sleeping Beauty and some kind of impatient fairy that had a striking resemblance to one of his devilish tutors was not very important to him. It was probably the medicine's fault. Dino had resting up to do (because the cold just wouldn't go away), and so he threw the covers back onto himself and had an uneventful sleep.

-

Yamamoto was not exactly the brightest light bulb of the pack. In fact, you could say that he was a half-broken light bulb, even though he was the greatest kid you would ever meet. It was just that he didn't think, and when he did, his thoughts didn't really make much sense.

He didn't believe in a number of things, such as the mafia or nail polish or metamorphic rocks or earbuds or saying the English alphabet backwards, because who in the right state of mind would waste time in doing those kinds of useless things? Yamamoto was an energetic sort of fellow, and he preferred to be up and about on his feet instead of idling around.

If there was one area that Yamamoto was exceptionally bad at making sense in, it would be Math. "I mean," he once said to a teammate at baseball practice, talking with great distress, moving his hands fervently, "what's up with that?"

"I have no idea," the teammate would reply—except it was a lie; that teammate was really good at probability—and throw the small white ball back at him.

And so, on that fateful beautiful Thursday afternoon during passing time, Yamamoto gave the clique his usual all-suffering smile as he pretended to be going the long way to the math classroom before he sneaked over to his locker and took out his book bag. He waited in the corners of the school until the bell rang, making sure that the Disciplinary Committee wouldn't find him. And then, as if he had been doing this for days and days, he waltzed out the door without a care.

It felt a little strange to not be hearing the math teacher bombard him with questions he didn't know the answer to, but Yamamoto wasn't too worried about that (he was more afraid of dodging all the rabid cars while crossing the busiest street in town). In fact, as he decided to take a detour and have a walk in the forest, he didn't care at all, and that frightened him a little.

But the thing that frightened him _even more_ was that he didn't know this part of the forest.

Or, rather, it changed from what it used to be in his memory. "This part of the forest isn't supposed to be this thick, is it?" he mused amusedly to himself as he ambled down the path that was getting fainter and fainter. Soon, a thick mist filled the air as Yamamoto kept walking towards a large black shadow in the middle of the fog.

"… I guess it's an abandoned theme park," he said, craning his head up so high that it hurt his neck and his baseball bat dug into his shoulders.

What he was looking at was a gigantic medieval castle worn down with abrasion from wind and water and earth. There were vines surrounding it, coiling up the watchtowers and creeping into the windows. The once lovely garden in the front was now choked with weeds, and moss and mold grew on the bridge across the river to get to the main gates.

"Well, it might be dangerous," he said to no one in particular, adjusting his baseball bat so it would be comfortable against his back. "And I might get lost or something. But it's an adventure, and I've got the time."

So he jauntily strolled across the bridge.

As he wandered around the empty, cobweb-ridden corridors of the creepy old citadel, there were many thoughts in his head. The first one was, "Wow, this is really realistic!" The second one was, "Man, I'm kind of getting hungry," as the math class he was supposed to be in was the one right before lunch.

"Damn," he cursed, rubbing his nose and eyes as he gave a fantastic sneeze. "Someone's really gotta clean this place up."

Yamamoto made his way back to the beginning, giving up on exploring it all in one day, but just as he was about to leave the cross bridge, a tower at the center of the castle caught his attention. It was bigger and taller than the towers on the side, with a grander style and could be even considered fashionable, if he were to rewind time a thousand years ago. The vines really had a party there as they snaked around and around, making an intricate pattern on the grey bricks.

He took a minute to think, until he remembered that he wasn't very good with common sense.

"Might as well," he said cheerfully, ever the optimist, and made his way back.

As he walked closer and closer to the impressive tower, he noticed that the mist was even thicker in this part of the abandoned theme park. (If he paid the slightest notice to his surroundings, he wasn't in Namimori at all—he had now stepped into the border of Namimori and Kokuyo.)

"Crazy fog machines," he said and laughed.

The rusty gate to the entrance of the tower was still working, so he swung it open and began to climb the seemingly never-ending steps. It was a good workout, and by the time he reached the half-way point, Yamamoto started to sweat quite a bit.

It took him twenty more minutes to climb _all_ the way to the top, and by then, he was a bit annoyed. What kind of crazy thoughts did he have when he decided to come? But by then, he was facing a wooden door that looked like it was going to fall apart any moment—maybe as soon as he touched it. But Yamamoto carefully twisted the knob nonetheless—he wasn't going to waste any more time (but what time was it anyways?)—and to his surprise, he found a boy with brown hair and European-esque clothes, sleeping in a very magnificent bed.

Stunned, Yamamoto blurted out the first thing that he could say. "Hey, are you alright?" (Really, what he meant to say was: "Are you _dead_?" but it wouldn't make much sense to ask a dead person if they were dead. They couldn't answer.)

And, to his surprise, the boy's eyes immediately snapped open. For someone that had been sleeping just a second ago, he shot up in his bed and looked around wildly, until he saw Yamamoto looking very perplexed, a hand halfway towards his baseball bat, half in the air.

They looked at each other for a moment.

And then the strange boy shrieked, "_Ieee!_" and pointed a finger at Yamamoto.

"Haha!" said Yamamoto, an amused smile on his face. "What does 'ieee' mean? Dolphin for 'I love you'?"

"That is not funny!" shouted the boy defensively, speaking in an accent that Yamamoto couldn't quite put a finger on, trying to get off the bed before tumbling down onto the ground. Yamamoto ran to his side, offering a hand, but the boy looked very embarrassed and started to slap his hand away. "You surprised me. Who are you?" He squinted up at him. "Why are you wearing such strange clothes?"

"I guess you can call me Yamamoto," he replied as he watched the boy—on closer look, he was about the same age as him, only shorter—dust himself off with all the dignity he had left. "Well, that's what everyone else calls me, so you can call me that, too. And I'm not wearing strange clothes—_you_ are!"

"Peasants are doing such weird things lately," said the boy worriedly, "like revolting against the kingdom. What did Father ever do to you?"

"Ahahaha," said Yamamoto, grinning. "You're a funny kid! Whatever your name is."

"Sawada Tsunayoshi," he said, a mix of stiffness and embarrassment in his voice. "You're supposed to call me Prince Tsunayoshi of Namimori or, um…" He shuffled his feet awkwardly. "His Royal Highness, but I think that's a stuffy name. So you can call me Tsuna, but just don't tell Dad. Er. Father."

Yamamoto gave a placid smile. "Alright, Tsuna."

The boy—now known as Tsuna—nervously smiled back, apparently at a complete loss of what to do. "So, Yamamoto-san," he said, refraining from tapping his foot, "how long have I been asleep?"

"That actually depends," said Yamamoto, half-joking. "When did you start sleeping?"

Tsuna paused, looking thoughtful for a moment, as he had twice the common sense Yamamoto possessed (only that they both didn't know that yet). "Well, I got cursed when I was born, so… and then fifteen years later, it was my birthday but my Fairy Godfather said that I would sleep for a long time—how many years? I am not really sure. So he put me to sleep on…" His expression brightened as he remembered, and Yamamoto subconsciously leaned in to hear Tsuna exclaim proudly, "I fell asleep on October 15th, 1009!"

The taller boy stopped for a second, wondering if he had missed the punch line.

"Wait—I'm—_ahahaha_, you're funnier than I thought!"

Tsuna looked crestfallen.

"It _is_ the truth!" he protested, planting his hands on his hips. "It is my curse! I have been sleeping for a thousand years, right? This is when my true love supposedly appears, and I am off to seek her out! You can even ask Reborn—he is my no-good Fairy Godfather—wherever he is."

"A curse? Your true love? Fairy Godfathers?" repeated Yamamoto incredulously. "Doesn't that kind of thing only happen in fairytales?"

"Fairytales? What are fairy—oh, never mind," he finished miserably, sitting back on the bed, bending over with his chin in his palms. "The least you can do is help me find my true love. Although I am not sure what the world a thousand years later really looks like. I'm not even sure what _she_ looks like."

Yamamoto laughed cheerfully. "Hey, don't worry, Tsuna! Everything will be okay."

"I hope so," muttered Tsuna, more depressed than ever. And in the midst of both their infinite optimism and depression, the two of them failed to see the fluffy white owl with the mismatched eyes spying on them for quite a while before leaving silently.

-

When the next morning rolled around, Dino was about to sleep in before realising that his cell phone sitting innocently on the pile of clothes on the swiveling chair was vibrating rather loudly. He looked at the clock and groaned—it was only 7:40am. But he forced himself up anyways—once he woke up, he would never be able to sleep again—and snatched the cell before opening it and pressing it to his ear.

"Hullo?" he murmured sleepily. "It's Dino. About to fall asleep."

"Stupid Dino," snapped a sharp, childish voice on the other side of the line. "Why are you still sleeping?"

Dino almost choked on his spit until he jumped up and started to rummage through his closet for suitable clothes to wear. A call from Reborn meant one of two things: either Reborn was going to visit Dino or Dino was going to be forced to visit Reborn.

"H-hey, _Reborn!_" he said with fake enthusiasm—something he had mastered over the years from greeting Reborn over the years. "What's going on?"

"You know exactly what's going on."

"… I do?" said Dino, mind still jumbled from the sudden wake, rubbing his tired eyes.

"One word," said Reborn. "Trouble."

"Why does this not surprise me," moaned Dino, neck-deep in self-misery. "_Why_." It was not a question. Reborn did not answer. Dino looked for more clothes.

-

Deep in the land of Kokuyo, a boy with a very peculiar haircut sat on a throne midst the abandoned zoo with a white owl on his shoulder. There was a fearsome trident next to his chair, and he crossed his legs carelessly as he lay back, shooting a very sinister smile at his newly awakened subjects.

"So I have been told by my lovely pet that you two have been careless," he said silkily with a hidden edge to his voice as he petted his owl fondly.

"Well, _we_ didn't know," said the one with the fangs and the barrettes and the bandage taped straight across his nose. "You just said to get rid of him for a while. It's been a while!" He said the next bit under his breath. "Besides, that fucking owl doesn't even know how to _talk_."

"It's been exactly a thousand years," added the one with the glasses, who toyed with the strings of his yoyo every once in a while. "That counts as a while, doesn't it?"

The boy with the odd haircut narrowed his mismatched eyes as he studied the two intensely.

"… Well, really now. I honestly do not know what to do with you," he finally chided, tapping his chin with gloved fingers. "I thought that I was being perfectly clear that I wanted him _dead_ when I said that I wanted him gone for a while. You have to understand that you rejoin the soil as you rot, and then you come up as fertilizer." The owl cooed. Pineapple cooed back.

Glasses sighed, but Fangs remained slightly defiant, crossing his arms impatiently. "You've been through Hell," he argued, a frown on his face. "That's not fucking fair."

"No, it's not very fair at all," Pineapple agreed breezily, stroking the bird. "You two just wouldn't understand."

Glasses and Fangs gave each other a long-suffering, knowing look.

"So I believe you two should get going now," said Pineapple, straightening against his chair, "before I have to do something drastic to get you out of here. Don't make me say it again." His one red eye seemed to glow and intensify. "I want Sawada Tsunayoshi dead."

Fangs not-so-subtly stuck out his tongue.

"I suppose you'd want some chocolate with that, too," said Glasses, sounding faintly annoyed.

Pineapple smiled. "Chocolate would be nice, too."

With that, Glasses and Fangs strutted out the door and into Namimori Town, but not before Fangs rolled his eyes and said, "C'mon, Kaki-pii, let's get the fuck outta here, I wanna get some candy" to which Glasses said, "Fine, whatever.

The boy with the badly out-of-style hair sighed. "You," he said the owl, "are the only one who truly understands me."

The owl merely blinked. Mukuro blinked back.


End file.
